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THE STORY OF SECRID

Brothers at FREITAG and a creative couple at Secrid – it’s a F-amily affair! René van Geer, one half of Secrid’s founding duo, tells us how their design agency in The Hague developed the first (and best) aluminum card protector, leading to the creation of Secrid.

Our Secrid adventure started in high school back in 1978 when I met Marianne, my creative partner in life. After high school we went off to get educated in our own fields: Marianne in fashion and I in design. We joined forces again after that and started our own design studio, SPIRID.

For twenty years we worked for several clients, but the 2008 financial crisis put a sudden end to that. A shortage of design jobs, a large amount of debt and seizures by banks and the irs didn’t make life any easier.

By Christmas 2008 we decided enough was enough. We were determined to start over and create a product that was going to be successful. The big difference was the client. We were going to be the client. Our own label.

«By Christmas 2008 we decided enough was enough.»

2008

2018

The idea was to redesign an older product of ours: the BodyCard. We developed this cardholder back in 1995 and sales for this product managed to keep our studio afloat. A true breakthrough, however, never materialized for the BodyCard. We never really put all our resources behind this cardholder. Other projects usually came before our own sales.

January 2009 was when we changed course dramatically. We showed all design jobs the door, no matter how big or small. Even though we desperately needed the money. We persevered and in October of that year we launched the first Cardprotector from Secrid.

«Nothing was more fun to us than building our own brand.»

We thoroughly enjoyed our 80 hour working weeks and We even decided that in the future we would be satisfied with a successful company with no more than eight people. By now we have 100 co-workers, an incredible collection of creatives with an average age of 28.

FREITAG was always high on our short list of inspiring companies with a unique vision. We dreamed about combining the one-of-a-kind FREITAG products with our Cardprotectors. Everybody at Secrid is incredibly thrilled that we finally made this dream come true.

F705 SECRID × FREITAG

Throughout the years we’ve found many solutions to drastically reduce waste, but sometimes you need a bit of serendipity for everything to fall into place. When FREITAG invited us to their HQ, we knew it was a match.